


The Madman In the Hospital Gown

by jimisfabby



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Brain Trauma!Jim, Brain-Damaged!Jim, Gen, Lots of Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-19
Updated: 2012-11-19
Packaged: 2017-11-19 02:05:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/567822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jimisfabby/pseuds/jimisfabby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every day, Richard sits alone in the hospital, doing the only thing the doctors will let him do -- think.<br/>But it's hard to think when you've no memory left to trawl through.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Madman In the Hospital Gown

**Author's Note:**

> So this was the first proper fic I ever wrote ever, and I originally posted it on my Tumblr (same name, but with added hyphens between the 'jim', the 'is' and the 'fabby'. Writing this here because I suck at HTML things and linking stuff).  
> Comments would be much appreciated, and any chance to get some constructive critisism would be great!  
> (And also if someone could tell me how to put links into things that would be fabulous.)  
> Thank you!

Richard doesn’t have many friends. He knows lots of people; there are the nice ladies who bring him food and coo over his bed sheets, ruffling back his dark hair, pitying the pale, slight man; the people in white coats that ask him questions he doesn’t answer, who avert their eyes hastily when his dark-eyed gaze rests upon them, as if scared of getting burnt; sometimes other patients or visitors that he sees when he wanders lost around the hospital in his hospital gown, after which he is gently coaxed back to his bed. All of them whisper behind hands, clipboards, or don’t even bother to hide it; ‘he’s mad’, ‘poor man’, ‘what the hell happened to that crazy bastard?’ Richard ignores them. They aren’t his friends. Richard meets his friends sometimes, but only when no one else is there.

So instead of listening to these strange, pointing, whispering people, Richard spends the day staring out the window, thinking, remembering, waiting for the blessed pills that made him fall asleep.

Sometimes, when Richard is thinking, he will remember a face, or perhaps part of a name. He tries to store that information inside his head, but his brain is full of holes, so all the facts keep tumbling out.

It was a normal day, the day Richard remembered. His day had been normal; picking at the food the nurse had brought him, as normal; answering the doctors’ questions with silence and a fiery glare, as normal; taking the pills that made him feel tired, and finally falling into one of his dreams, as normal.

Usually, Richard’s dreams were swirling fogs of half-memories and semi-truths, and they made him feel so confused. Sometimes he had nightmares of a man with dark blond hair and piercing blue eyes bleeding to death on the ground in an alleyway somewhere, and all Richard could do was watch the life seep out of him, until his blue eyes were no longer piercing, but perished.

And then there were the nights that Richard dreaded, when he would wake in a cold sweat, screaming. In these dreams, the man in a suit came to him. The small, pale, dark haired, dark eyed man. The man whispered in his ear terrible, terrible things, and Richard yelled, pleaded for them not to be true, but the man only laughed, a cruel, mirthless, teasing laugh, and it started all over again. Then he awoke, the sound of a madman’s cackle echoing in his ears, and the glare of two soulless black eyes burnt into the space behind his eyelids.

But tonight’s dream wasn’t normal.

It wasn’t a swirling fog of puzzlement, or the madman in the suit. This time, everything was light, and clear and peaceful. He wasn’t wearing that awful hospital gown, but, to his terror, the suit of the man in his nightmares. He looked around for help, terrified, when someone came walking towards him. He recognised the figure, but he just couldn’t remember from where…

The figure was a man, and he smiled at him, and held out his hand. Tentatively, Richard took it. The man’s fingers were rough and calloused, but gentle, and his bright-eyed gaze was cold and biting, yet warm. Richard liked the man. He smiled back at him, and let his own thin fingers squeeze the man’s large ones. And then the man started to walk away, tenderly tugging on Richard’s hand. Richard followed him, and together they walked. Where, Richard couldn’t say. Maybe somewhere _beyond_.

And from that dream, Richard woke smiling, and for once, he remembered it. But there was something else that stuck in his mind that hadn’t been in the dream, something Richard couldn’t quite work out. A name. Just a name.

 _Sebastian_.

Even though Richard couldn’t remember anyone at all called Sebastian, it fitted with the dream, and the man who led him away. Richard liked the name. It sounded nice, and for some reason he couldn’t explain, it made him feel safe, cared-for, maybe even loved. All things he had never experienced at the hospital.

So he repeated it, over and over, aloud. The words came easily off his tongue, like he had said it many times before, so he said it more and more. The doctors made notes on his strange mutterings, on his finally content smile. Cautiously, one of the doctors asked Richard who Sebastian was. And for the first time, Richard answered a question, slowly, like a foreigner unsure of a new language;

“Sebastian… I’m waiting… for Sebastian.”

And Richard knew the words were true, because some sense told him he’d said them _before_.

The doctors were perplexed; who was Sebastian? They had no idea who he was or could be, seeing as how the man sitting smiling lazily before them had turned up in a stretcher one day with nothing but a name and a bullet hole in his brain. Miracle recovery, they said. One in a million that he would have survived. But he did. Or at least his body had.

If this Sebastian man was coming to get Richard, it would be a load off their plate – a free bed, fewer complaints about odd patients, better hospital reputation; they could almost see the front pages, _‘Miracle Brain Surgery Patient Lives Again.’_

But the newspapers were fairy tales – it was likely the man had simply invented Sebastian, and that Richard would never be going home.

 _‘Poor bastard,’_ was the shared thought of the doctors.  
Completely oblivious to the speculations of the people in white coats, Richard still dreamt and thought contentedly. His dreams were meetings with Sebastian, and now they were greeting each other like old friends. He wasn’t scared of the suit any more. In fact, he rather liked it. He wasn’t even scared of the man in the suit, because Sebastian was always there to swoop in and save him, his knight in shining armour.

Because of course Sebastian would save him. Sebastian always saved him.

But Sebastian will never swoop in and save Richard.

He would love to. He would have loved nothing better than to see his friend again. To hold his friend’s hand and to walk away with him into _beyond_.

But he can’t.

Richard doesn’t remember the gunshot or the scuffle as he was flung to the ground. He doesn’t remember seeing his attacker lying dead thirty feet away from him, a trickle of blood running from his head, or his saviour slumped against a wall, his white shirt being slowly stained crimson from the ugly wound in his stomach. He doesn’t remember smoothing back the man’s dark blond hair, looking achingly into those piercing blue eyes. He doesn’t remember their final exchanging of words, of pained smiles, of his promise to join him soon. He doesn’t remember feeling the man’s hand fall limp, the smile still on his face, his eyes closed gently, as if he was dozing.

He doesn’t remember where he buried him.

Every day, Richard wakes from another adventure with Sebastian, and he sits and thinks of the dream, content in his own little world, knowing one day that his dreams would come true.

Richard is waiting for Sebastian.  
And Sebastian is waiting for him.


End file.
